Author interviews, why do them? I read they are an excellent marketing tool for authors who sell less than hundreds of thousands of their books. Like me. This latest one had some unusual questions, consequently, replying to them was an intriguing exercise for me. More on that in a few minutes. First, the latest …
Culture of superlatives: What does that mean, exactly? Recently, I’ve become aware of my tendency to use superlatives both in my writing and in speaking. Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about word selection, both mine and that of others. The fourth in the Lindsey McCall medical mystery series, Malthus Revisited: The Cup of Wrath …
Our Culture of Superlatives: Do Our Words Matter? Read More »
Right. Why look back to Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism? Huh? Why would we want to return to one of the last Roman Emperors and a Greek philosophy which personified rigorous self-denial, extreme fortitude and emotional indifference? One of the very first books I devoured as a college undergrad was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A college professor …
“When there is no food for three or four days, the children cry from the pain. So I make them mud cookies to fill up their stomachs.” The missionary priest, Monsignor Patrick Marron from Food for the Poor, quoted a woman living in a village of about two hundred people about 20 miles from Port …
Ideally the concept of justice is considered to be independent of contextual factors like politics. And the notion of correlating the two feels somewhat odious, or at least repugnant. But the recent Speilberg movie, Bridge of Spies, is a fascinating tale of the oxymoronic twists of our government and its desire to appear just. I don’t recall …
The word politics has gained an almost entirely negative and pejorative meaning when used by many of us in these days of scandal, corruption and greed. Perhaps there was a time when politics as noun or adjective meant something other than a snipe but not in my lifetime. And so it was with great interest …
Remember Big Hairy Audacious Goals? Made famous a couple of decades ago by management and leadership gurus like Tom Peters, BHAG stands for big, hairy, audacious goals. I was reminded of my love hate relationship with goals by Dan Pink while listening to a podcast of his speech to the 2014 graduating class of Northwestern …
Ok, I’ll admit that the title is a ploy to get your attention but it’s no lie. Exercise is the best antidote to stress of all types; regardless of whether the stress arises from fear of Ebola or from anxiety induced by a more imminent danger, exercise is the best antidote. Recently, I have had …
Once I realized that writing was exactly like other businesses my husband John and I had done together; some extremely successfully; others not so much, I accepted the fact that promoting this new novel will be no different. Therefore, I hired a publicist to help promote the events planned for the Texas trip. Wisely, the …